JMLab Tantal 505

Good on
Hi- fun, low on -Fi

French audio is, I feel, far too little known outside France, with perhaps a few
notable exceptions. This is a shame, as I believe we are missing
out more than we should. Particular as they often are, the French
also have their own notions about sound; just like Italians, they
too have a proud musical heritage, and some of their companies
show it well.

One such company surely must be Mr Jacques Mahul's Focal-JMlab. Active for just short of two decades, it has for years been a prime source of
drivers to many a well known speaker manufacturer, especially in
Britain (along with the equally famous French competitor, Son
Audax).
As things stand, if you want drivers and kits, you need Focal; if you want complete speakers, you need JMlab. Either way, it's Mr Mahul.

Tantal is JMlab's least expensive line. As expected, these speakers are
finished in vinyl, and only the smallest member of the family is
available in mandatory black - others offer a choice of black
ash, palisander and light oak, or their vinyl counterparts.

To be frank, the
finish is rather good, better in fact than I expected for the
meager sum asked for it. It's a very straightforward 2 way bass
reflex enclosure, which instead of the usual circular reflex tube
uses a rectangular port on the front baffle.
This is in my view a preferred arrangement to back firing ports; while it doesn't
eliminate problems with back walls and placement, it does help in
reducing their importance by a reasonable factor. The driver
complement is quite common.
The bass/mid driver is a cellulose treated 120mm cone, while the tweeter, surprisingly for this price, is a 25mm titanium unit.

Even more surprisingly, the dome is inverted. News to me, old stuff to
JMlab, which uses this arrangement in each and every model in all their lines. In the absence of literature, I'm not quite sure what JMlab claims about this.
However, I was impressed by the fact that the dome appears to be made in a single step process, including the diamond-shaped surround (strongly reminiscent of
JBL - pardonnez-moi, les gars!).

I was even more
impressed by the rear mounted pair of binding posts - never
before have I seen such massive gold plated posts on a speaker in
this price class. Yes, there's only one pair, so no biwiring, no
biamping, but hey, look at the price!

Anyway, JMlab states its response is "65-22.000 Hz +/-3dB", its
sensitivity is quoted at 89dB/1W/1m, its impedance is rated at 8 ohms with a minimum of 4 ohms (kudos to JMlab for quoting the minimum as well!), the crossover point is given as 3.5 kHz, and maximum programme power rating at 70W.
Recommended amplifiers are given as 10-60W. Dimensions (HxWxD) are given as 300x175x200mm,
and it weighs in at an even 4 kilos. The front grille is built around a plastic frame and is detachable - but I wouldn't do it (see later on).

The last good
touch is that the binding posts will accept cables up to 5mm
thickness - I had no problems whatsoever with my standard 4.5 mm
OFC cables.
Lo and behold, finally a manufacturer emerges who
does not damn you to telephone line caliber cable just beacuse
you're buying their cheapest speaker! All you other dummies, make
a note of this.

Microdynamics

Adjust the
volume to just above whisper level and be ready for a surprise.
No, it won't dwarf Martin-Logans and Revels of this world, but it
will sound out on a par with all other competitors in its price
class I ever heard. And with a little tolerance, if we allow its
class to be expanded somewhat, that would include the likes of
Tannoy Mercury 2, and even B&W DM302.

It's all there,
from the top down to the bottom. In case of the top, the 505 is
the one to beat - it's extended, but really extended, no sheen,
no false brilliance, just some sweet sounds. Sure, I heard
better, but that better also cost better, and in some cases, much
better.

The bass is
lean, but it's mean. From such a small box, with an estimated
effective volume of some 5-6 litres, and a 120mm driver, what do
you expect?
Godzilla will fail to impress you with its weight
here, but what is important is this - it may not go deep, but
what it has, it does honestly. The low end is clean and with
little hangover, giving the box an air of speed and immediacy.

Macrodynamics

First and
foremost, this speaker does not appreciably change its character
more than usual when playing loud. To a certain extent, of
course, it does change character in absolute terms, as every
speaker does.
However, in subjective terms, it changes its tone
rather significantly - as every small box does. Playing loud
subjectively accents the lack of deep down bass lines, which just
aren't there to carry the music along.

This makes loud playing small speakers subjectively seem more unbalanced towards
the upper octaves than they really are. I'll get back to this in
a short while. Another thing I noticed is the subjective lack of
compression until really loud, something I get much more often
than I'd like in the upper octaves. I have no idea if that's what
the inverted dome is about, but if it is, I can report that it's
working pretty well.

In absolute
terms, you'll be listening to far louder music than is
comfortable long before you stress the speaker - but do take the
manufacturer's specifications very seriously.

On the down
side, the upper range will sound a touch more prominent than it
should be. Or so I feel.

Overall sound

Overall, this is
a very much up-and-at-'em speaker. It wastes no time in going
about its business and projects a feeling of great certainty that
it knows exactly what it's doing. This is not to say it's too
serious a speaker - no, in fact, it's a very lively and full of
life speaker.
It doesn't just play music, it lives the music. In that sense, it's almost like a relative, a distant cousin of JBL, but in other aspects, it's out there by itself. Not surprisingly, given the price, it lives the music more like a raw, natural
talent, rather than an educated musician.

It goes about
music making in a very honest way, no tricks, no stunts. It just
does its job and seems to enjoy doing it, and generally has a lot
of fun. It projects music along an imaginary line approximately
aligned with their own front grilles.

Obviously, it
also has its failings. The lack of bass lines is the most obvious
one, but there are other less obvious ones. I usually like to
take the front grilles off so as to have maximum dispersion - do
that on this speaker and you will indeed get a little too much
treble.
This I take to be a design trade-off, one can't have it
both ways - either the grille stays on and you have what you need
to have, or you take it off and have more treble than you need.
The other alternative would have been to get it right without the
grille, but then, once you put the grille back on, you'd have a
depressed treble.
In my view, given its price and targeted segment of the market, I think the designers made the right compromise - but note that this is a very subjective matter. The
unknown factor here is the environment it will find itself in. If
a room is heavily furnished, more upper range will be absorbed,
hence more compensation will be required.
As it happens, my room is only reasonably furnished, and this gave me a feeling of still
a little too prominent upper ranges. Not too much, but enough to
be noticable.

The dispersion
left to right is good, even very good given the price, but the
front to back projection is definitely not one of its strong
points. Subjectively, you have all performers lined up next to
each other in the same line - you can tell where each is, but
within the same line.
This is not too much of a problem with modern music, but is not good for complex classic works, one tends to loose perspectives.

Despite the
front baffle reflex ports, I discovered that these boxes are very
sensitive to placement. Moving them even a little, like 6-10 cm,
can sometimes produce notable differences in the sound obtained.
Of course, all speakers react to placement, but not many do to
this extent.
If you place them on shelves, as they are intended to be placed (the other, much more preferable choice being on stands), make sure they are angled, or you may be facing some
thudding pseudo-bass.

Other than this, you can just sit back and have some honest-to-goodness fun with
these boxes. It's not really Hi-Fi, but the fun factor is high.

They are indeed small in volume, weight and price, but they have a big heart, and
it's in the right place. I don't know how you did it at this
price, but well done, gentlemen! But do make them a little less
bright, would you?

Not true Hi-Fi,
but fun to listen to and can be a boon as special effects
speakers. Very good as cheap back speakers.

Some ideas

I was somewhat
enchanted by these speakers, despite their bright character and
lack of serious bass, so I experimented a lot with them. I used
different electronics and found them to be very tolerant of what
they are being driven by in electrical terms - obviously, not so
in acoustic terms, but that's hardly news.

I connected them
to my JBL Sub10 active subwoofer, supplying a 26cm (10")
driver powered by its own internal 100W amp. It took me a better
part of a day to get them to cooperate, but after much twiddling
and playing around with the sub's controls, I got it right -
crossover from sub to 505 at around 100 Hz, sensitivity of the
sub at 10 o'clock, phase positive.
And sure enough, it was a whole new ball game - now the 505 was augmented by some powerful
bass lines, which added, well, good red wine to a tasty rye
sandwich (with cheese and ham). It was now a whole meal a man
could live on, even if still a little on the bright side.

Curiously (or
perhaps not?), adding deep, powerful bass lines just put the
excellent tweeter in better perspective. I put on Hevia's
"No Man's Land" and just let it go. It sounded good. I
went on to Vangelis, and he sounded good too. Next, I threw on
some Edit Piaf, and she sounded really good. By the tenth CD, I
gave up. But I stayed impressed by the speed of these speakers.

Next, I placed
them on top of my JBL Ti600 speakers, wired them to the same
source, but turned them backwards, so they were firing at the
back wall. This produced some interesting results, so I
experimented some more. Finally, I settled on arching the 505 at
approximately 45 degrees left and right on top of their
respective boxes - now, that produced some really interesting
results.
There's a 2dB difference in efficiency (JBL's 91dB vs 505's 89dB) and this seemed to have something to do with it all. Finally, I hooked up another amp and drove it via tape outputs of the first, so the first powered the JBLs and the second the 505s.
This hookup allowed me to adjust the volume for each pair at will, and this produced some DAMN interesting results! It would seem that in uses such as this, their slightly bright character comes in very handy.

At some point, the back wall sort of moved back some 10-12 meters, and my
cherished third dimension - depth - was there. Oh boy, did I have
fun.

Now, this led me
to think that these boxes might just be ideal for, you know,
the THING we're not supposed to talk about here, the curse of
audio technology, all this gag about, well, pictures and sound,
that stuff, yeah, home you-know-what. No, you work it out, I have
an editor and you don't.

So, you could
and should augment these little wonders with a subwoofer, now or
later. Logic dictates using the same source for the sub, but
you're by no means obliged.

Another idea you
can explore is adding them to your present system as, well,
augmenting multiple rear firing radiators (I'll have to patent
that one!). Put them on your present floorstanding enclosures,
hook them up and give them a go.
Try as many possibilities as you can think of, you may just find the right one. The variables here are speaker sensitivity and power amps. You want your main
speakers to be more efficient than these little boxes, else you
risk having too much reflected sound. Also, if your present boxes
go below 6 ohms, the amp may not like seeing the total load
impedance (now consisting of paralleled speaker A plus speaker B
impedances) go below 3 ohms, and in practice, it may well go
below 2 ohms, God alone knows with what phase shifts.
You may experience some current limiting from lesser electronics, which
unfortunately includes some not-so-cheap components (but if you
have a Krell, don't worry, be happy). Yet, this will become a
serious problem only if you push the amp; as long as you're
within usual room volumes, it shouldn't be problem. Biamping is
of course possible, but I don't think it makes much sense in
terms of prices involved.

Judging by this
model, listening to JMlab's bigger, better and more expensive
speakers may well turn out to be great fun - I hope so.